There are many similar traits between the Devil May Cry series and the Castlevania series; the most notable Castlevania games from which the Devil May Cry series takes inspiration are Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness. Ironically, when the third 3D Castlevania game, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, was released, it was generally compared to Devil May Cry.Similarities between Devil May Cry and the Castlevania games. Most obviously, DMC1 and Castlevania both centre on a giant, evil castle belonging to a powerful evil being.
DMC1's protagonist, Dante, has the power to transform into a demon. While in this state he deals more damage and recieves less, and can do so until his magic meter (or 'Devil Trigger Gauge'😉 depletes. Cornell in Legacy of Darkness has a wolf form which deals more damage, recieves less, and is active until his red jewel (ie heart) meter depletes.
Dante looks very similar to a cross between Cornell, with his short white hair, and Alucard. All three are half-human; Dante is a demon's son, Alucard a vampire's, and Cornell is a werewolf. In addition, both Alucard and Dante lost their mothers tragically while inheriting immense power from their fathers.
Both Dante and Alucard are also menaced by servants of their arch-nemesis disguised as their mothers; the SotN Succubus disguises herself as Lisa, while Trish is said to be a copy of Dante's mother Eva created by Mundus.
CV64 and DMC both feature a mission in a garden to follow something; in DMC it's a ball of white light, while in CV64 it's Malus.
DMC features a boss fight with a creature called Death Scythe on a pirate ship, an obvious reference to Castlevania: Rondo of Blood's Death boss battle.
Similarly, the giant spider boss Phantom appears several times to chase Dante down corridors in much the same way Behemoth once chased Richter. Unlike in Rondo, it's actually possible to defeat Phantom in these encounters via combat damage, but it's still easier to simply flee.
DMC features the common CV sequence of walking across a drawbridge, though in this instance the drawbridge is at the back of the castle rather than the front. Like both Symphony and the N64 games, the drawbridge retracts after (or in Symphony's castle, whilst) being crossed.
Both DMC and CV64 feature a battle with a large boss in a circular Colesseum.
CV64's Duel Tower consists of a series of battles where cages drop down, forming a small arena in which a boss battle takes place. The Death Scissors monster in DMC1 creates a similarly narrow arena using a force field.
DMC and Symphony both feature a demon called Alastor which manifests as a sword; in Symphony, a shadowy being holds the sword, while in DMC it attacks Dante without an apparent wielder, and after failing to kill him becomes a weapon he can use.
Dante was armed with a pair of gauntlets called Ifrit which, among other things, allowed him to do a homing kick attack. Cornell once had the same ability, as can be seen from the werewolf enemy in Castlevania 64's Forest of Silence, which has Cornell's original move list. Ifrit also had a fireball attack called 'Meteor' which was similar to that used by the Fist of Tulkas, and a later iteration of Ifrit, DMC3's Beowulf weapon, also gains a move similar to that weapon's Fists of Fury attack.
Nightmare-Beta works very much like a 3-D version of the Crystal subweapon from SotN, both firing a bouncing projectile that can damage multiple enemies.
Both series feature the use of Holy Water as a weapon; DMC treats it as a smart bomb. In DMC3, the weapon Artemis is also able to create what amounts to a miniture Hydro Storm.
DMC1's final boss, Mundus, was a winged statue-like monster with a hole in his chest that was his weak point, and was fought in a 2D stage with a black sky and lightning. This is eerily similar to the Dracula Ultimate battle in Legacy of Darkness. The Mundus 2 battle in DMC is equally similar to the final Dracula form in CV64, with both bosses stationary in the middle of the arena, and both using ball-shaped homing bolts, throwing straight-line shockwaves, and both able to summon fiery dragons to attack the protagonist.
In both DMC1, 3 and 4 and Symphony, a later area of the game turns out to be an altered version of an already-encountered one; in DMC1, for example, Dante returns to Mundus' castle at night to find many of the doors sealed and new areas opened. In Symphony, Alucard finds himself in an inverted version of the original castle. This is referenced directly in DMC1 when Dante enters the portal to the demonic realm, sinking into a pool of liquid in a room's floor and finding himself in an inverted, identical room; 1 also features a 'mirror realm' with rooms mirrored left to right rather than top to bottom.
In DMC1 and rather famously in the Castlevania series, the final boss is load-bearing; once Mundus is defeated, the castle collapses. After a face-off with Mundus' third form, it collapses some more, then, for no good reason, explodes.
http://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Devil_May_Cry_and_Castlevania_comparison